The Forsaken Wilderness, page 18
This was now my fourth visit up to Ranibaug. We were still stocked with the mountaineering gear and tent-kits from our previous trip a few months ago. They had been stowed away in the storage hold of the jeep and were unloaded once we found a safe spot to park the vehicle. Taluka seemed bleary and laden with gloom. It was sundown when we reached. The tall tale of the tree had settled upon my fancy, and occupied most of my subsequent meditations. The sage Somdev was the most navigationally adept companion I had enjoyed thus far. He knew his way up the mountain-sides like the sadhu we had first encountered at the campsite up in Harki Dun who had lead us up to that troubling rockface, and abandoned us shortly thereafter.
We were able to cover the trek up to Harki Dun in a matter of a day and a half, as opposed to the two days it had taken us one our first trip. Pratyusha proposed we carry on and conspired determinedly to prevent all possibilities of a halt. She was the fittest of the lot, with an inexhaustible endurance that bordered almost on the fanatical! In the manner of certain P.T. instructors—competing perhaps only with Shera’s athletic vitality. So intent was she on beholding her grandmother with her very own eyes, that she seemed to possess a near-militant devotion to completing this journey.
We would not fail this time! And indeed, we didn’t. We made it easily past the rock-face through the same precipitous ledge I was previously taken along by the sadhu that found me in a condition very nearly resembling death. Somdev tracked each route with an almost extra-sensory keenness. He knew which rock to step on, which path would provide for the dubious passage of three adults, which platform would collapse with our weight, which branch seemed steady enough for support, and each broken route up the jagged, rocky formations that surrounded us—the ones that yielded a dead-end, and the ones which gave a clear-entry up to a more walkable pathway.
The sadhu led the way, but Pratyusha overtook him eagerly at every opportunity, her lungs squeakily huffing past us at an alarming pace, the mud beneath her trekking boots displaced with every assertive step. She had even carried along her cushioned Reebok running shoes in the event that they were required for a more daunting terrain that had to be fleetingly covered with a lighter foot. It took only the ruins of the tattered campsite we crossed to finally stall her from her unflappable march up the steep slopes and boulders.
She was, no doubt, struck by its presence. This time, we managed to unearth certain files from the bottom of one of the old rucksacks that lay hidden below the heap of belongings in the torn tent-hold. There were identification cards dating back to the year 1970, a log-book filled with scribbled entries for the purpose of documenting the survey expedition to Ranibaug, passport-sized younger renditions of the faces I encountered there. Even the late sage whose hour of deliverance we had been called upon to witness, bereft of shaggy hair and beard, a cleaner-cut smile than the one that had greeted me by his funeral pyre. One of the faces sighted in the antiquated rashan cards seemed also to belong to the older sadhu that played the marine-shelled shankh from within the temple. A late convert it seems to the ascetic way of life. Many of the Swaami Ji’s belongings too appeared secretly to occupy the floor; the stray rudraksh, a book on bird anatomy, a burnt-out agarbathi, scattered remnants of Pooja samagri, the odd crepe bandage.
Pratyusha sifted through all the dusty disintegrating papers, in search of some sign of her grandmother’s documentation. Even a name or a signature on some worn out file. Baba Somdev walked up to the lone rucksack that still stood upright near the rubble of a bonfire. He poked at it first with his flute, then opened its laces slowly to peer inside.
‘All we have here are some goddamn trigonometrical drawings,’ Pratyusha threw aside a stack of sheets. ‘Nothing of any consequence.’
‘Wait just a minute,’ I bent down to gather the drawings from the pebbled floor. ‘I’ve seen these before…there’s one that stands out.’ I hurriedly leafed through the triangular shapes and graphs, even unbound a loose contour map with wriggling curvilinear forms nearing imbecility. ‘Here it is!’ I spotted the pyramidal tomb at the bottom of the pile. ‘What do you make of this?’
She studied it in the torchlight, her eyes swelling serenely as she ran her gaze along its intricate geometry. Before she could place an association, my eyes began to roam the lower nooks and corners of the tent. When we had previously been in its confines, our principal aim was to find food of any sort—we scavenged the sleeping bags and gunnysacks for any trace of even a crumb, emptied the rucksacks in search of a spare packet of biscuits—and so had neglected to chance upon what I then discovered, which was to my wildest astonishment, a vintage photo camera.
I brought it out from the sea of belongings the back of the tent-hold provided shelter to, and showed it to Pratyusha from whose hands the diagram of the pyramidal tomb promptly fell.
‘Give it to me!’ she snatched it from my hands. ‘Where did you find this?’
I remembered the photographs we had recovered, but a camera had eluded us on our previous inspection.
‘AAAAAHHHHH!!!’ Baba Somdev called from outside the tent.
We rushed out to find before his feet, a corpse of the same indefinable animal lying twisted and gnarled on the ground—only half its upper torso spilling out of the rucksack. The hump at the back was visible, it was considerably smaller though. We had a chance now to study its face, to let each feature sink in, and examine its relation to any other species of animal kind as yet discovered. The closest association we could come up with was that of the hedgehog. Its scaly surface also bore a remote kinship to the Iguana. Its head seemed made of the same humanoid skull, its limbs wore a similar design to the writhing branches and tentacles of the Tree. It was quite unlike the winged-serpents spawned by the mountain. Apart, of course, from the shape of the skull, which seemed uniform on all accounts, even when considering the multiplying insects that had swarmed me now on two occasions—which seemed pregnant with a similar lobe about to emerge from their swelling tops. The shape of the temple, the grotesque deportment of the Tree, the pyramidal tomb, the oblong slabs at the bottom of the water body, the glowing orb-like luminescence mysteriously inhabiting the bottom of the mine. They all seemed to constitute some remote design.
‘How far is it from here?’ Pratyusha asked, checking the time on her wristwatch.
‘About two hours,’ I supposed.
‘One,’ Baba Somdev stated.
She hoisted up her rucksack and strung it up onto her shoulders without as much as a thought. ‘We better be on our way then.’
chapter ten
The message received on Pratyusha’s mobile phone from National Geographic had arrived when we had spent the first night in Taluka itself, it being the closest spot to connectivity we were likely to enjoy—a fact that had been carefully concealed from me till we were to set foot in Ranibaug, were its contents a potential deterrent to my enthusiasm regarding the expedition.
‘Startling new discovery!’ it read. ‘Come back to our offices at once. We will bear the expense for your travel. Please revert at the earliest.’
In light of this deception, my first steps up the terraced ascension to the familiar drone of the temple were marked with a slightly ill-tempered assurance. This time we were struck by none of the mental incapacities that had plagued our prior expeditions beyond Harki Dun. The unsteadiness of sensation that was a constant feature of this part of the journey had escaped us; owing possibly to the sadhu’s proficiency up the steep mountain walls. With the exception of a light wheezing on Pratyusha’s part, the result no doubt of her inordinate exertion, none of us were ridden with any species of fatigue, either bodily or mental. We were well nourished this time, having carried along a shamefully lavish amount of food and beverages that ached our backs but quelled our moods. The sadhu consumed none of it, adhering to his strict principles—leaving the lion’s share of the spoils to the two of us. We enjoyed them with a heartiness that bordered on gluttony. On the first night itself we had, Pratyusha and myself alone, gone through three tins of baked beans, an entire can of Dak Luncheon meat (something the sadhu would not in his wildest moments consider), two packets of Maggi Veg-Atta Noodles, two of Top Ramen-Oats, and a sprinkling of salted crackers. It kept us in good stead for the better part of the morning, as we were to not enjoy a break till at least lunch time, when we set up the stove and prepared a reasonable portion of MTR Rajma Chaawal which we had with a generous helping of Cuppo Noodles. A few biscuits and dry fruits were consumed on the trek, and we had with us a more than ample store of water. Pratyusha’s rucksack contained two bottle-holders on either side which were filled to the utmost breadth of their circular capacities. Sometimes on the walk, one of the large water-canteens would fall from her back, and one of us would invariably have to pick it back up and drink from it before handing it back over to its allotted holdings.
The temple stared at us from up above, its two square-shaped apertures brooding like angry eyes. Baba Somdev bowed at its appearance and caressed the very earth that stretched up to its feet. Pratyusha was affected by its architecture. She recognised the wholly alien and uncanny nature of its aspect, so remote and cut off from anything constructed in the Hindu world, in the name of any deity this side of the Indian Ocean. She thought it Druid or Celtic in shape and form. It reminded her of the unnecessariness of the Stonehenge and other such inexplicable structures that loomed over the earth like an insult to manual labour. From what she shared, it seemed to bring to her mind ‘hermetical shrines built by madmen to an invisible goddess’.
‘What?’ I questioned.
‘A mermaid coral kingdom!’
‘I’m sorry?’ I asked again.
‘A lofty sandcastle!’ Echoes of images spun before her mind. ‘The bottling of the Aurora Borealis. Gigantic hillocks with harrowed expression! Town planning. Cityscapes constructed from Jenga built with legs of Lego! Blocks! Bricks! Baking a cake…’ her babblings now deteriorated to the infantile. ‘Bah-Bah Black Sheep.’
‘Pratyusha!’ I shouted. ‘Get a hold of yourself.’
‘Yess doctor!’ she began to chew on her fingernails. ‘I’m sorry!’
‘You’re what?’ I frowned. A wind was now beginning to blow our way.
‘Sorry…’ she said.
‘What on earth has gotten into you Pratyusha? Are you feeling okay?’
‘I’m feeling fine!’ she said.
‘Then?’
‘It’s just that I’m….’ she thought long and hard. ‘Sorry…’
‘What the hell are you talking about Pratyusha?’ I caught hold of her hand and began to guide her away from the temple. The sadhu, ignoring shrewdly this demented display, entered in with eyes closed, not even looking our way.
‘What the hell!’ she snapped herself out of it. ‘Where’s the camera?’
‘Which one? It’s in your bag.’
‘N-n-no the other one…’ she stuttered. ‘The one we found.’
‘Here.’ I unhooked a strap of the rucksack from my left shoulder. ‘I have it!’
I had wrapped it in a bundle of woollen pullovers, and placed it carefully right at the top of my clothes above the stove. I brought it out delicately and handed it over to Pratyusha, who then proceeded to store it in her own rucksack as if mine was somehow lacking in dependability.
‘I’m going to check the negatives in a lab once we get back,’ she explained.
‘If we get back…’ I swayed and sort of shook my head.
A ragged band of mountainfolk emerged from the stone-arched entrance to the temple, greeting us in their incomprehensible dialect. Baba Somdev seemed to speak it fluently and conversed with a few of them near the altar. They watched us in their woolly garments and mountainous layers of shawl with a sort of bemused fascination. One of them offered to exchange his ornate Fez for my HRA cap, which I gladly did. Baba Somdev whispered something into one of their ears, on account of which they all turned frightfully silent and visibly grave.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, as we took off our footwear and stepped in. No one answered. They just gaped on at Pratyusha in awe.
‘Have any of you seen Shera?’ I then ventured to inquire.
‘Shera?’ one of them cackled.
‘The lion!’ Baba Somdev told them. ‘I know of him. Your friend and guide. He is with us.’
‘And what about the Professor?’ I asked. ‘Any word from him?’
‘Not as yet,’ declared Baba Somdev, mournfully.
‘Where is everyone?’ I asked.
Prayusha stood silent all this while, helplessly trying to recover her faculties. I could feel her starting to sway. The wind reduced for a flicker of a moment, and one of the gathered bunch simply spread out his hands and laughed. ‘But everyone is here!’
‘I mean Karma Bodh!’ I said out loud.
Everyone now turned pale, the silence thickened, the air quivered, the walls hissed—Baba Somdev pressed his forefinger to his lips and motioned my way, placing his hands on my shoulders to take me out of the temple. Pratyusha followed us out. We put on our shoes and headed up to the edge of the peak.
‘We don’t refer to her by name!’ Baba Somdev then informed me.
‘I see…’ I apologised as we descended the step ladder beyond the cliff.
Pratyusha hesitated to enter the cave complex once we found ourselves on that ledge. Something about the potential for claustrophobia frightened her.
‘There’s plenty of space inside,’ I assured her. ‘You won’t feel claustrophobic. I promise you. I’ve been in there.’ I pointed my neck in towards the entrance. ‘You can trust me.’
Something about my words seemed to settle her, she placed her rucksack by the entrance and took a few deep breaths, then picking it back up and heaving it on her back, exhaled—‘Let’s go!’
We silently crept in, the three of us, feeling in the darkness for anything resembling an opening. Pratyusha finally shone her torch in to illuminate the distant corners and bends of the corridor we were slowly walking through. Baba Somdev then took the front, taking hold of the torch from her and wagging his index finger in a leftward direction. ‘Here,’ he whispered. ‘This way!’
He proceeded down a passageway bedded with the pointed spikes of numerous stalactites. It was like walking on a Fakir’s bed of nails.
‘No wonder you only survive on tea and water,’ I jested. ‘You don’t seem to feel pain,’ I halted. ‘This isn’t the way I came in before. This is a different route. I can’t be sure of where you’re taking us.’
‘Come with me,’ he frowned, a harrowed impatience erupting on his otherwise friendly features.
‘Just go!’ Pratyusha shut her eyes and started to walk.
It took us exactly forty-one steps to cover that tract of thorns, I counted each one of them. The curving walkway descended down another flight of finely-chiselled steps leading us to a platform that overlooked the waterbody I had been submerged in. Not a soul occupied its pebbled shores. The hearth was empty of logs, and very sparse illumination provided by the odd torch or lantern made visible the entry to the mine-shelf.
Baba Somdev, however, had mapped an alternate route that lowered us after a long downward climb to the very stalactite covered doorway I had conversed with Karma Bodh at. The winged cocoons were gone from the ceiling. Nowhere was any member of the survey expedition in sight.
‘WHERES IS SHE?’ screamed Pratyusha.
‘They have all proceeded down below,’ he said, glowering into the depths of the pit from over the edge of the shelf.
‘How?’ she glanced over.
‘By way of a vessel,’ he said. ‘It can be descended by rope too, if you wish.’
That was all the prompting she needed to remove a thirty-five-feet long roll of elastic wiring, which she fastidiously strung up to the edges of the rocky entranceway in multiple knots, each intended to anchor the fastening of the other. This prolonged anchorage occupied a good seven to eight feet, after which it dropped over the wall of the mine-shaft, leaving us with only a descent of some twenty-seven feet. We put on our gloves, knowing the need would arise for another one, which I swiftly produced from my rucksack, having foreseen the need. My rope provided another twenty-four feet, granting us a total length of a little over fifty feet, still negligible in the scheme of things, yet sufficient enough to provide us with a closer view of whatever it is that was down there. Perhaps when down there fifty feet below, we would come upon a possible fissure or if lucky, a shelf, which we thankfully did.
Once down there, Pratyusha rummaged through her rucksack, practically emptying it of its contents to unearth from one of its zips, another wire of a similar sort with a span of some thirty feet. The tip of our joined elastic wire and rope dangled over our heads. With a jump of a few feet, without hazard to the knees, we found ourselves on a four-by-six foot mine-shelf carved into the sloping wall. We began to shovel a pit in the rocky floor of the shelf with our bare hands, so as to devise a burial where the anchorage for another rope could be interred.
